Abstract:

The article is a synthesis concerning the evolution of the geo-strategic conditions of Central Europe’s security in the 1990s. A Polish standpoint has been presented. The article largely bases on the three-year-research of the Austrian-Polish-Swedish team, although it also raises issues that have not been highlighted yet, which, from the Polish point of view, however, are of significant importance for the security of the region. Our part of the research focused on the performance and aspirations of countries of Central and Eastern Europe including Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Slovakia and the Baltic Sea countries. Our studies were complementary to the research carried out by the Swedish (National Defence College in Stockholm) and the Austrian team (National Defence Academy in Vienna).

For systematic reasons problems and standpoints have been grouped and presented in four major paragraphs:

Poland’s new place in the European geo-strategic structure as a result of changes in external environment of Poland’s security.
Elements of new national security doctrine.
Second phase of NATO enlargement - Poland’s viewpoint.
Polish standpoint and propositions on the CESDP.
The turn of the millennium, beside its chronological and symbolic appeal, has also a geo-strategic dimension. The latter seems yet not to have been properly appreciated and discounted. Almost all hitherto existing superpowers, from the ancient times up to the present, emerged and collapsed in the course of violent events accompanied by war and bloodshed. The downfall of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact took place in a peaceful way and were an unexpected gift of history, which no one in the eighties would even dare to think of. The events created also an enormous chance for the societies of the European continent. For the Polish society, the breakthrough at the turn of the eighties and the nineties was particularly significant. First, because it was the Poles who initiated the dismantling of the Jalta system. Second, the events enabled Poland to determine clearly her attachment to the Occidental cultural sphere. An important issue - as for the past three hundred years - the Polish had to ask themselves questions like: to fight or to cooperate? with whom to fight? with whom to cooperate? These were the recurring questions as the history of this country is a good example of unpredictability of developments. Poland in the 16th and the 17th century was one of great European powers. At the end of the 18th century it disappeared from political maps partitioned by its neighbours.